Last updated on December 27th, 2021 at 11:08 pm

The Glitz! The Glamour! The Red Carpet and Long Speeches! The 93rd Academy Awards are on tomorrow night and I can’t wait. The very first ceremony was held in 1929 and the first national telecast was in 1953.  That means tomorrow will be the 68th airing on TV – and I think I’ve probably seen over 40 broadcasts….and almost all sitting alongside my mom.

When my mom passed away in 2016, I knew that this would be one of the hardest things to do without her.  It’s harder than her birthday or Mother’s Day.  Probably because on those holidays I had to “share” her.  But the Oscars were our thing. I think my mom’s love for the movies started with her own mom, my Grandma Rose. Since it was just the two of them, they used to save enough money each week to go to a movie.  It was their special time too. 

I can’t remember exactly when my mom and I first started watching movies together, but it’s been a while. This was back before cable, when, here in Detroit, they had “Bill Kennedy at the Movies” on Sunday afternoon.  They would always show the classics, such as Bette Davis in “All About Eve” or Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain”.  We would watch them together every week. 

We then progressed to the Academy Awards movies and started a new tradition each year when the nominations were announced. Once we knew all the nominees, we would make a plan to see all the “Best Picture” movies. We would also try to see as many of the “Best Actor” and “Best Actress” nominees but we’d usually run out of time. There’s only about a month between the nominations and the awards, so in the days before OnDemand and Netflix, it was hard to see everything.

We always watched together.  We’d scream at the screen when Al Pacino lost again and we’d act like Joan and Melissa Rivers in dissecting everyone’s outfits. And there were always snacks. In our family, it’s all about the snacks and once we start a tradition, we keep it the same. We always had potato chips, Fritos and my mom’s famous “Calypso Dip”.  Don’t judge us on the quality of our snacks – this all started in the 70’s. Even after I was out of the house and living on my own, I would go over to her house to have dinner then watch the show.  And because it ended so late, she always insisted I spend the night.  It was one of my favorite nights of the year.

So, what happened to this tradition in the years since my mom passed? While I miss her, the best way to honor her is to keep it going.  Jen now hosts a new “family Oscar party” at her house. We missed it last year, but we’re now all vaccinated so we will be resuming our small get-together tomorrow. And the snacks?  You can bet there will be potato chips, Fritos and Calypso dip. And, there might also be some wine.

And, as for seeing all the “Best Picture” nominees before the broadcast?  I have to do a shout out to my stepson, Scott. I think I might have had just a little bit of influence on him, but he is also a huge movie fan.  We now have our own tradition of trying to see at least a few of the nominees together. I hope that I have influenced his love of movies and that I was able to pass down to him some of what my mom passed down to me. Every year at Christmas, I buy him at least a couple of (old school) DVD’s of old movies that he may not have heard of or ever seen, like “All About Eve” and “Singin’ in the Rain”. The tradition lives on…..

I have to go now…..time to get the Calypso Dip ready for tomorrow night. Want to try it? Here’s the recipe:

Much of this inspiration for “The Harper Girls” blog is to share the things that made our family life special to us.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this “Academy Awards” story. If we can inspire you to start new traditions of your own, or to tweak some of ours to fit your family, we would be so pleased! Please let us know in the comments below.